Who can hope to win love that gives none
Who can take pleasure in always seeing a gloomy face?

THE BRIDE OF THE NILE

By Georg Ebers

Volume 3.

CHAPTER X.

After the great excitement of the night Paula had thrown herself on her
bed with throbbing pulses. Sleep would not come to her, and so at rather
more than two hours after sunrise she went to the window to close the
shutters. As she did so she looked out, and she saw Hiram leap into a
boat and push the light bark from the shore. She dared neither signal nor
call to him; but when the faithful soul had reached open water he looked
back at her window, recognized her in her white morning dress and
flourished the oar high in the air. This could only mean that he had
fulfilled his commission and sold her jewel. Now he was going to the
other side to engage the Nabathaean.

When she had closed the shutters and darkened the room she again lay
down. Youth asserted its rights the weary girl fell into deep, dreamless
slumbers.

When she woke, with the heat drops on her forehead, the sun was nearly at
the meridian, only an hour till the Ariston would be served, the Greek
breakfast, the first meal in the morning, which the family eat together
as they also did the principal meal later in the clay. She had never yet
failed to appear, and her absence would excite remark.

The governor's household, like that of every Egyptian of rank, was
conducted more on the Greek than the Egyptian plan; and this was the case
not merely as regarded the meals but in many other things, and especially
the language spoken. From the Mukaukas himself down to the youngest
member of the family, all spoke Greek among themselves, and Coptic, the
old native dialect, only to the servants. Nay, many borrowed and foreign
words had already crept into use in the Coptic.

The governor's granddaughter, pretty little Mary, had learnt to speak
Greek fluently and correctly before she spoke Coptic, but when Paula had
first arrived she could not as yet write the beautiful language of Greece
with due accuracy. Paula loved children; she longed for some occupation,
and she had therefore volunteered to instruct the little girl in the art.
At first her hosts had seemed pleased that she should render this
service, but ere long the relation between the Lady Neforis and her
husband's niece had taken the unpleasant aspect which it was destined to
retain. She had put a stop to the lessons, and the reas